Know your enemy
by NCR Ranger
Summary: One of the first requirements of victory.


Somehwere on the Ark.

* * *

 _I know you_

The gravity hammer, wieghing more more than most, or possbily _any_ human, could hope to be able to lift, and with its blade enrusted with mud, grime, and dried blood of several species, descended with hydaulic force on the weathered stone pillar that was sheltering a fireteam of exhausted, but angry, UNSC troopers, thier well used and scratched BR55 rifles smoking from recent firing.

 _We've been here before._

With a rumbling crash, the pillar shattered. The men hiding behind it, their attention on more of the snarling, red armored, hulking hammer-wielders approaching from their flank, were dead before they realized it. The overhwhelming, concussive force of the Gravity hammer lifted their muddy-uniformed bodies into the air, flinging them away in a shower of splintered rock chips, and bits of cracked, shattered armor and helmets.

 _No surprises._

The Jiralhane chieftain, jaws open with a triumphant and primal roar, didn't have long to savor his sucsess. Even as the shocked remaining troopers reacted, many of them twisting around to bring their weapons to bear, and the massive, towering alien with the hammer advanced on them, seeking to finish the job, he was interuppted, by the intervention of an M12 Warthog. Engine racing, its big all terrain tires chewing up and spitting out the ground beneath them, the 4x4 skirmishing/ scouting vehicle slammed into him with all the impact of a charging African elephant. For all his size and bulk, the Jiralhane was killed at once, the Warthog's big front grill bars crushing him into the mud, and then absoletely smashing him under the wheels. His hammer went flying.

 _Settled score._

Amid cheers and yells of encourgement from the relieved riflemen, waving their weapons in the air, the M12 drove on, still at its breakneck speeds. It weaved around the field of loose boulders that dotted the field in front of it, mixed with the occasional fragmented and burned chunk of puple hued metal of a downed Covenant vessel. It was a myraid of debris, covering the landscape, but the M12 took it on easily. As a second vehicle pulled up alongside, having also rushed foreward to help, they continued on, speeding across the battlefield, as their allies followed as fast as they could.

 _I know the darkness, from inside._

As they mounted thier determined charge, far ahead of them, two insect-like walker-style machines of the enemy clambered forward. Their hull plating, overall white with red stripes, was dirty with grime and scorched by blast marks. They were veteran war machines, the ones their operators, the mericless ex Covenant and mercenary warriors known as the Banished, called Blisterbacks. They were about to prove why they were called that.

 _Reckless rage, and poison pride._

With a chorus of loud _chffss_ , a volley of spiky-finned missiles flew out from rows and rows of openings in the walkers' roofs. Painted in a similar style to the walkers themselves, the missiles left long tails of smoke and fire as they shot downrange. Accelerating within seconds to supersonic speeds, they covered the distance to their targets with alarming swiftness, impacting the speeding M12's, and shattering them both into nothing but impossibly twisted, burning bundles of metal. They were thrown back, like they were built of cardboard. Their crews perished instantly, without any remains of them being left.

 _I know the weakness._

But, they hadn't been charging alone. By now, as the wreckage of the courageous M12' burned, more UNSC combat vehicles reached them, and rushed past, bent on avenging them. Cyclopes, their massive metal legs pumping, ran on further than the M12's had been, while their arm mounted cannons spat fire and hot shot toward the Banished. They leapt over the biggest pieces of debris in their path, leaving deep imprints in the wet, muddly ground.

 _I know the pain._

More UNSC warriors joined the counterattack that the M12's had begun. From the sky, like a hailstorm, fell a cluster of white metal pods, whistling in from orbit, leaving contrails. They plummeted, with some of them missing their intended landing zones, by ( rather fittingly ) crashing into the Blisterbacks ! With all the energy and force of having fallen from space, the pods were like hammers, violently stomping the walkers into oblivion, thier legs splaying out to sides in a surprisingly lifelike imitation .

 _I know the fear, you do not name_

Not all of the pods were off course, though. Many- most- landed right where they were supposed to, embedding themselves into the mire. Seconds later, the outer plating of the pods, thier doors, were blown out from the interior, and out sprang black armored soliders, the famed ODST's. Brandishing M7 SMGs, BR55's and a slew of other weapons, they joined the continued charge of UNSC.

 _And the one who comes to find me_

They were met by the Blisterback's own backup; more the Jiralhane. A company's worth of them, at least. All armed with Hammers, or the rather torture-chamer-style Spiker rifles, with those long blades at the front. The large statured aliens were also moving forward, over, past, and around the debris, over the mud, as the clouds overhead rumbled and flashed with lightning.

 _When my time is through._

The opposing forces, much the same way as armies have clashed over thousands and thousands of years, over hundreds of planets throuhout the glaxy, finally closed in on each other, and the fighting began in earnest. Gunfire now was roaring back and forth, hot lead and even hotter plasma cutting down combatants. The big Cyclopes stomped forward, reaching out with thier claws to seize and sqeeze to death any of the Banished soliders they could get ahold of. Banished tanks, the Plasma mortar-firing Wraiths, levitated over the field, vaporizing whole UNSC sqauds and leaving just glass where they'd stood, only to be blown to kingdon come with the gunnery skills of the UNSC Cobra Railgun tank-killers.

Assets, vehicles, and troops from both sides dogpiled into the fray, amassing on both sides of the field, and laying into each other. This was no place for mercy, or rules. The human race had fought the Covenant for decades, and even though all the way out there, beyond the edge of the Milky Way, and though the Banished were not of the Covenant, that hardly mattered. The nature of that fight was still here.

 _I know you. I know you._

The Banished may not have been the Covenant, but that didn't matter to the UNSC of the _Spirit of Fire_. The Banished were the Jiralhane. The Sanghelli. The Kig Yar. The Unggoy. All the alien races that they'd fought to the death against, from the polar ice caps of Harvest, to right here and now, amid the remains of a crashed and ruiend Assault carrier, lying on the surface of the Ark.

Those same races may have ended their fight against the human race at large, in the Milky way, but that was neither here nor there. For the warriors of the _Spirit of Fire,_ everything was the same.

They knew their enemy.


End file.
